“I’m convinced that mucking about with aircraft from our living room was pivotal in selecting my career”

Popular Computing Weekly said of Psion’s Flight Simulation on the ZX81: ‘No words can do justice to this most elegant of programs. You will not see a better computer game until Psion produce one for the Spectrum.’ Here it is. Learn to fly, bank, dive and climb, see the world outside through the cockpit windows, land and take off with the aid of many cockpit instruments.”

So reads the inlay of the cassette tape for the 48K ZX Spectrum version of Flight Simulation by Psion. Deep in that area of the brain where earliest memories and nostalgia swirl into a dream-like haze, I long held an image in my mind of the cover art for that game. A cockpit… nighttime… runway lights. An image search and there it was, along with the sensation of neurons firing as an ancient memory rises to the surface.

I was about five years old when my dad came home with that little computer, along with a collection of a, and . Despite it not being as “fun” as the others, held a strange allure.